The others are Banco Popular Espanol SA (POP) and Kutxabank,
Spain’s bank rescue fund FROB said in a statement today. More
banks and a group of insurers will invest when the vehicle,
known as Sareb, issues more shares and subordinated debt this
month, FROB said. Santander will invest as much as 840 million
euros ($1.1 billion), equivalent to a 16 percent stake, Spain’s
biggest lender said in a filing.

Spain is creating the 60 billion-euro facility to help
lenders such as the Bankia group that have received state aid to
jettison real estate assets that turned sour during the
country’s property crash. The creation of Sareb, is a condition
of Europe’s bailout for Spain’s banking industry agreed in July.

“There has been a wide response from Spanish banking
institutions and insurers,” Economy Minister Luis de Guindos
told reporters in Brussels today. “We will have a significant
number of investors, foreign and domestic alike, in this
project.”

Stake Capped

The government is keeping its stake in Sareb below 50
percent to avoid having to include it in national accounts. The
aim is for Sareb to operate for as long as 15 years and yield an
annual return of as much as 15 percent, Fernando Restoy,
chairman of FROB, said Oct. 30.

“A lot of questions are going to be asked about which
investors are going into this and what they hope to get out of
it,” said Simon Maughan, a financial industry strategist at
Olivetree Securities in London in a telephone interview. The
government’s strategy of mixing private and state capital in
Sareb may undermine confidence in it, he said.

Contributions to Sareb include 397 million euros from FROB,
164 million euros from Santander, 118 million euros from
CaixaBank, 66 million euros from Sabadell, 57 million euros from
Popular and 25 million euros from Kutxabank, FROB said. The
initial 827 million-euro amount provided by FROB and the five
main investor banks plus contributions due in coming days will
cover about 75 percent of Sareb’s equity, FROB said.

“Yesterday was a first step with only five investors, but
there will be capital increases in the future,” de Guindos
said. Investors will back the vehicle with 1 billion euros of
capital and 3 billion euros of subordinated debt, he said.

Sareb will have about 90,000 homes on its books within two
years, Antonio Carrascosa, FROB’s director general, said Nov.
27. The bad bank will complete the purchase of 44 billion euros
of assets from nationalized lenders by the end of December, FROB
said today.

Below is a list of the commitments made so far by Sareb
investors and the stakes they will take in it: